Papilio DUO user Monsonite just posted about a cool project he is making with the ZPUino and the new VGA adapter. It’s a self contained CAD engine and he already has a LQFP-64 footprint rendering on the screen. Stop by the forum and check it out!

Hi Jack and Forum, I have been experimenting with the Papilio Duo with ZPUino and VGA, as a means of producing CAD gerber files. It’s very early days – but shown is a screen shot of a LQFP-64 package, created on the ZPUino and displayed in VGA. I’ve added a few vias and a 4 thou track for scale. If Chuck Moore could change the way VLSI CAD tools were used in the early 1990s – then I’m sure the Papilio Duo and ZPUino can be applied in this area. Imagine a complete CAD workstation embedded in a mouse – it’s been done before. Here’s a posting from 3/8/2000 by the late Jeff Fox – who worked with Chuck Moore on the early Forth chips Nothing new under the sun – we just forget 99% of what’s gone before us.

Our favorite FPGA security hacker, Colin O’Flynn, has a new Kickstarter project that just went online. It’s the ChipWhisperer-Lite which packs a serious punch with a Spartan 6 FPGA, 10-bit ADC, and an XMega Micro. Included with the board is software and tutorials to get you up to speed with embedded hardware security research projects such as side-channel power analysis and glitching.

ChipWhisperer® is the first open-source toolchain (GPL licenced) for embedded hardware security research including side-channel power analysis and glitching. The innovative synchronous capture technology is unmatched by other tools, even from commercial vendors. Similar commercial equipment is too expensive ($30k – $400k), and being closed-source limits usefulness for academics. Instead this project bridges the gap between academic research and in-the-trenches engineering. Several peer-reviewed publications describe the design, matched with hours of hands-on tutorials for getting started.

Here at Gadget Factory we are happy to announce that our next generation of products are now available at our online store. The long awaited Papilio DUO along with the new Papilio Shields are finally here after a successful Kickstarter campaign that helped us raise more than $62.000 in funds to make this dream come true, here is a short description of each product:

The Papilio DUO has an FPGA on the top and the same chip that is used in the Arduino Leonardo (ATmega32U4) on the bottom. It’s like having an Arduino with a full circuit laboratory connected to it! For example, you can draw circuits to move pins, connect extra serial ports, or connect a bitcoin miner to the Arduino-Compatible chip. Just plug it into your computer using a USB cable, download our software and start drawing your own circuits.

The LogicStart Shield provides everything needed to get started with VHDL and FPGA development on the Papilio DUO with one convenient and easy to connect circuit board.

The Computing Shield provides all of the hardware needed to recreate classic computing systems on the Papilio DUO. Here are some existing retro computing projects that can be easily converted.

Here is a cool project that adds HDMI output to a Neo Geo arcade board using an FPGA.

When he tested the HDMI with his monitor, it was out of spec but still worked. His TV, on the other hand, refused to play it at all. This was due to the Neo Geo outputting 59.1 fps – not the standard 60 fps. Using the FPGA, [Charlie] overclocked the NeoGeo by approximately 1% and used the 27Mhz pixel clock to change the FPGA output to a 720 x 480p signal.

Good news everyone the Papilio DUO and the Papilio Shields are expected to arrive in stock early next week and we are now taking pre-orders for the new items in the Gadget Factory Store. We encourage you to pre-order now and reserve your DUO because the numbers will be limited since the big part of the first batch went to Kickstarter backers.

Here is another great Bil Herd article about Active Filters. Thank you HackaDay!

In this installment I’ll test the theory that filtering out the harmonics which make up a square wave results in a predictable degradation of the waveform until at last it is a sine wave. This sine wave occurs at the fundamental frequency of the original square wave. Here’s the video but stick with me after the break to walk through each concept covered.

LCD panels don’t use a simple protocol like VGA for turning pixels on and off. Instead, the very high-speed LVDS is used. LVDS is beyond the capabilities of simple microprocessors, so [EiNSTeiN_] built himself a clone of an XuLA FPGA prototyping board and set to work. After figuring out the signal lines to the panel, [EiNSTeiN_] pored over the timing diagrams for the LVDS controller and the LCD panel. From the data sheets, he figured out data is usually sent to the panel at about 500 MHz. The homebrew FPGA board couldn’t manage that speed so [EiNSTeiN_] cut the FPGA clock in half.